To many people the word Brassica simply means cabbage: green and round, green and leafy or perhaps a cannonball red one but, still, a boring cabbage, for which little garden space is earmarked.

Brassica, though, is the botanical name for what is actually a huge family of plants. Some of them are purely ornamental rather than edible and all of them are easy to grow and deserve of lots of space in our gardens.

One of the beauties of the extended Brassica family is that the majority of the species — there are around 3,700 species in this extensive family and 338 genera — share the basic requirements of neutral to slightly acidic soil conditions in a reasonably sunny, well-drained, garden area. These shared requirements make it a relatively trouble-free task when allocating a garden bed in which to cultivate an interesting variety of what are extremely nutritious vegetables. For added visual interest, they can be edged with a narrow border of flowering members of the same family.

There is a type of cabbage for every single season of the year

Planting various Brassicas in the same bed also simplifies watering and pest control. It also helps when it comes to essential crop rotation patterns.

Soil preparation is key to successful Brassica cultivation: simply weed and dig the selected area — removing stones, roots of perennial weeds and any other debris in the process. Then dig in copious amounts of old, well-rotted, preferably organic, manure/compost and you are ready to roll. Soil preparation should be done at least six weeks in advance of seed sowing and then kept lightly watered to help in manure/compost breakdown. A light dusting with organic lime, two to three weeks prior to seed sowing is also recommended as, along with nourishing Brassicas, lime is a major help in combating ‘club root’ problems.

All Brassicas need constant soil moisture: this means not allowing the soil to completely dry out in between watering — but not drowning them either, please.

Now, without further ado, let’s take a look at some of the most useful members of this massively diverse ‘tribe’.

Cabbage (Brassica olracea var capitata) really is the ‘king’ of vegetables and there is a type of cabbage for every single season of the year. Leafy, open-hearted cabbages are, especially in our climate, the best types to grow for spring and summer cropping with hard-headed ones, including red cabbage, more suited to the cooler weather of late autumn and winter. Simple to start off from seed, this should be thinly sown, just a quarter of an inch deep, in prepared seed beds/trays/pots, with seedlings being transplanted out into their permanent growing positions at the four- to six-leaf stage. Planting distances vary from variety to variety, so please check instructions on the seed packets for this.

Cauliflower (Brassica olracea var botrytis) can, as long as seasonal suitable varieties are chosen, be grown all year round as well, so can radish (Raphanus sativus). Yes, radish is a member of the Brassica family of plants.

Then, still on the vegetable side, there are many common and some not so common Brassicas that are all, in their respective seasons, excellent candidates for a Brassica bed. These include the following: Broccoli (Brassica olracea var italic), calabresse (Brassica olracea var italica), a selection of kale (Brassica olracea var acephala) from the large variety available, collard greens (Brassica olracea var acephala), turnips (Brassica rapa var rapa) and swedes/rutabaga (Brassica napus var napobrassica), arugula/rocket (Eruca sativa), horseradish (Armoracia rusticana), mustard (Brassica juncea) and Sinapis alba, kohlrabi (Brassica oleracea var gongylodes), Brussels sprouts (Brassica oleracea var gemmifera) and bok choy (Brassica rapa var chinensis).

On the floriferous front, the Brassica family includes popular flowers such as sweet alyssum (Lobularia maritime), sweetly scented wallflowers (Erysimum), candytuft (Iberis), sweet rocket/Dame’s violet (Hesperis matronalis), honesty/pennies from heaven (Lunaria) and gorgeously perfumed stocks (Matthiola).

For those of you who may be wondering what the visible connection is between, for instance, a cabbage and a wallflower, it is the flower form itself. If a cabbage, or any other member of this family, is left to reach the flowering stage, it is easy to see that each single flower is of a four-petalled, Celtic-cross-shaped form and, on the majority of Brassica plants, seed pod formation — a ‘sylique’ — is identical as well.

Brassicas are generally adored by bees and other beneficial insects but cabbage white butterflies, unfortunately, love them too. It is, therefore, important to keep an eye open for their eggs, usually laid on the underside of the leaves, and to remove them before they develop into voracious caterpillars that will decimate the plants.

Please continue sending your gardening queries to zahrahnasir@hotmail.com. Remember to include your location. The writer does not respond directly by email. Emails with attachments will not be opened.

Published in Dawn, EOS, November 18th, 2018